In English:

Seven churches’ tour – introduction

In July 2018 we made a bus tour of seven churches. We noticed this awesome tour in a local newspaper and loved the idea immediately. The tour lasted all day and it included one coffee with snacks and one meal. One coffee meal we paid ourselves. Tour passed on the southwestern area where I have visited seldom. Our group was big consisting of 50 enthusiasts. On the tour we had two guides. The one, real gentleman, who guided us back and forth to the area. The other was local guide, real Lady, which we picked at the destination. This Lady was specialized in the area and guided us in the churches. She was a real “databank” sharing exact information about churches, their history and even some legends. This was necessary, because churches were old. Six churches, of which one was former monastery church, were stone churches and one wooden church.

Here are churches which we visited: church of Raisio, church of Masku, church of Nousiainen, church of Lemu, church of Askainen, church of Merimasku and church of Naantali.

Holy Martin’s medieval church in Raisio

This medieval stone church was built between the years 1500 – 1520. My highlights of this church were to nfind beautiful baroque style wooded chair (1653), awesome crucifix (from1300s), old wall clock and stunning Votive ship (frigate from 1786) hanging from the ceiling.

Notice that the vault’s form is wooden barrel form. The distance from Helsinki is 170km / 106mi. Easiest way to reach Raisio from Helsinki is bus connection, which takes about 2½ hours. Church of Raisio belongs to the road side churches, which means that they are open for visitors in summer time. Inside there is always a guide to serve You.

That is a beautiful church with all these old ‘accessories’ in there, well worth a trip. Thank you for showing us. Tours on a bus are such a good idea, you have guides and see a lot but don’t have to worry about driving.

Thank You. Yes, on a bus tour with guide is worthful due to information which is not easily sometimes to find in Internet. Going from one church to another is easy and on this kind of tours churches are open surely. The only problem is that 50 persons studying church at same time is not good – not easy to hoot pics. I noticed that I missed some gorgeous things. Among my photos there are some which my wife shot.

I am sorry for the late answer to Your kind comment. We spent a couple of days elsewhere, because it was time to visit my father’s grave and put winter flowers in his grave. It’s a Finnish habit to visit to the tombs of our families and because my dad’s tomb is far away, we spent a night in another town made his tomb beautiful with flowers. Same thing will be done in the spring. Thank You.

This looks like such a lovely tour of seven churches. Sometimes you wonder why you haven’t heard of tours in your local town sooner…but always better late then never. The photos here are amazing, and it looks like plenty of light illuminating the churches from the outside in. The hourglasses caught my eye. I wonder how were those used back in the day… Great post 🙂

Thank You commenting so nicely. Well this was quite typical pulpit. During years I have collected photos of pulpits in one post and presented there very modest and gorgeous pulpits. If You are interested to see them:

The old medieval church of Raisio is rather beatiful – both inside and outside! I enjoyed “walking” around! ^^ So interesting to see the triumph crucifix, the paintings, the sand glasses (?) and your personal highlights mentioned at the beginning, Matti.

I’m a bit late in visiting this blog post, I’m sorry, but this time it regrettably didn’t show up in the WP reader.
Thanks for showing this impressive old building! – Michèle

Thank You. You are not late with Your comment. I am glad that You saw my photos and loved them. Next Church presents a Church which has skillfully painted curtains on it walls. As You noticed our medieval churches are quite modest, because they are not gold covered inside. “Sand” glass is hour glass or in German Sanduhr. We call them in Finnish “Tiimalasi” and it seems that the word Tiima come from the Word Time, “Zeit-Glas”. 🙂

Thanks for your further explanation, Matti! It’s sometimes surprising to see clocks or these “Sanduhren” in a church. I never noticed them in German churches until I visited a small church in a German region called East Frisia. I asked and a man explained that they used to have a clock especially in this church as their pastor always tended to give an extremely long sermon. Too long … He should have a grandstand view of the clock and the time that already had passed but it’ s doubtful that this – in general – is the reason to set out clocks somewhere in the nave, 😉

I have found in my earlier church posts hour glasses. I dug up one of my old post presenting an old red wooden post from 1647-1652. It was there, where I saw for the first time a German Lady who was interested in our old churches. if the sermons are too long, this Church offers a different solution for parishioners, so that they do not get bored. When You look at this Church inside, You will soon understand about what I mean. 🙂

Yes. Nowadays we could say that, it is a Church full of graffiti presenting scenes from the Bible. Until now I have found three “picture” churches in my country including this one. I think that it is my second post, because this was published in November 27, 2009 and my first post presenting a glass museum was posted in November 23, 2009. Anyway, not so bad start of blogging. 🙂 Matti